Jesus, the Only Path to Freedom

Galatians 2:15-21, 3:10-24
Imagine for a moment that you’re driving to a big meeting in another state. You rent a car and are running ahead of schedule, breezing down the Interstate when, suddenly, traffic slows to a creep. You check Wayzer and it tells you that the freeway will have you creeping for a little while, but that in less than a mile, you should have smooth sailing. Suddenly though, everything stops.

As I say, you’re ahead of schedule. But you don’t like waiting! You remember that about three-tenths of a mile ahead, there’s an off-ramp, that can lead you on a back way to your destination. It will take longer than you’d planned. But you’ll be moving. You hate how out of control you feel when waiting in traffic jams.

You tear down the road on the berm and get to the exit ramp. You feel like you’re in charge of your trip again!

But as you speed down the two-lane country road, you look back to see that a hoist has moved the cause of the traffic jam out of the way and traffic on the Interstate is flowing again. “That’s okay,” you think to yourself...until you get about twenty miles down the road and see a sign: “One Lane Traffic Next 30 Miles.” And at the end of that stretch: “Detour, 5 Miles Ahead.” Your decision makes you over an hour late for your meeting.*

Our second lesson, Galatians 2:15-21, 3:10-14, has been described as “dense” by one New Testament scholar. I feel a bit dense when I read it!

But if we read it carefully, we see that God is telling us through the apostle Paul, who wrote these words back in about 49 AD, to not be impatient with God’s way of saving us through Christ, to not try to take control of our own lives after Christ has set us free to live--really live--in the freedom of God’s kingdom.

A brief reminder: Paul had founded the churches in Galatia. It had come as good news to this mostly non-Jewish (or Gentile) congregation that Jesus Christ saves from sin, death, and pointless existence all who turn from sin and trust that by the victory over death Jesus won when He died on the cross in our places, we have life with God and purpose that extends even beyond death! (It's good news for us, too, no matter how immune we may have become to it, the best news you'll hear this week or in your life!)

But shortly after Paul left, a group of people scholars call Judaizers came along and said, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, “What Jesus did on the cross and from the empty tomb is very cool. But if you really want to be saved for eternity, you need to obey Jewish ritual law.”

In other words, they were telling these new Christians that they really weren’t saved by God’s grace through their faith in Christ. That they needed to be good Jews in order to be saved.

The Judaizers were telling the Galatians that it didn’t matter if the apostles had taught them that Jesus was, in His own words, “the way and the truth and the life” and that no one comes to God except through faith in Him, they had a way that Jews had been using for centuries that, the Judaizers were sure, would make them righteous apart from Jesus.

They totally disregarded the power of the death of Jesus, morally perfect God in the flesh, taking our punishment for sin so that, after God the Father raised Jesus, He could give all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus His righteousness, His freedom from sin, death, and futility!

Paul must have felt a bit like I did on the rainy day after Ann and I had laid down zoyzsia grass in our lawn in Cincinnati and looked out to see a neighborhood kid rapidly pulling out clump after clump of the soggy sod and throwing it at a friend in fun. The freeing good news that Paul brought to the Galatians directly from Jesus Christ was being uprooted by preachers who thought that they knew better. The faith and future growth in faith of these newly minted Christians was being threatened by the allure of an off-ramp to hell.

We could spend hours on how Paul responds. We only have minutes. So, let’s take a look at just three points in this lesson from 30,000-feet, diving into a verse here and there.

The first thing Paul says that no one is made right with God (or made righteous) by keeping God’s law or by being a good person.

How often do we hear at funeral visitations, for example, “He has to be with God because he was such a good person”?

That’s wrong way thinking!

As Paul writes in Galatians 3:10-11 of our lesson: “...all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.’ [That’s Deuteronomy 27:26 that Paul quotes there. Then he says, quoting Habakkuk 2:4;] Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because ‘the righteous will live by faith.’”

For centuries, Paul’s fellow Jews and, earlier, Paul himself, had thought that by doing good works, they were setting themselves free for life with God. And the fact is that there was nothing wrong with the law God gave His people through Moses. There was nothing wrong with the Jews' often ritualized obedience of those laws. As we stand on this side of Jesus, we no longer need the ritual/sacrificial law, but there's still nothing wrong with God's moral law--stated succinctly in the Ten Commandments.

The problem was that many of Paul's fellow Jews obeyed God's laws to the letter not because they were grateful for God's grace, but because they thought that by being good, God would be obligated to take them into His kingdom.

The truth was that by relying on their good works, they were really enslaving themselves to a system that ranked their worthiness in the eyes of God on their performance and they were moving away from God. They thought that they were in control.

Faith accepts that we aren’t in control and that, left to our own devices, we completely go the wrong way.

The second thing I want to surface from these words in Galatians is that we can only be made righteous by faith in the perfect Savior Jesus Who died in our place on the cross.

God’s law can’t save me.

But when I look at its demand that I love God totally, love my neighbor with the same passion with which I love myself, that I worship only God, that I not steal, gossip, covet, commit adultery, or use God’s name in vain, even when I only do these things within the imagination of my mind, I realize that I am a sinner in need of a Savior.

Christ makes right with God those who see their own sin and that Christ is the only way out of the eternal death my sin has earned us.

Paul writes in Galatians 2:19-20: “...through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

The third and final thing I want to emphasize is this: Watch out for the plausible sounding detour.

In our little scenario at the beginning, taking the delay-ridden back way seemed like the right thing. It made you feel good, made you feel that you were in charge. But it didn’t work out so well.

This is a lesson for us when it comes to life with God. If we think that we can rely on our goodness to save us from sin and death, to give our lives meaning and purpose, we are tragically and fatally mistaken!

“There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death,” the Proverbs tell us more than once.

When, from the perspective of our sin-tinged reasoning, we think that we can make ourselves good enough to get by with God, we are definitely taking a wrong turn.

Think of it: The fact of the matter is that God only accepts people who are totally, completely, purely morally perfect into His kingdom. And God doesn’t grade on a curve. People who think that God will hear their prayers or use them in fulfilling ways because they’re nice guys are disappointed.

We would be in heap of trouble, eternally lost to God, eternally condemned in our sins, if it weren’t for one important fact. Paul puts it this way in Romans 5:6: “...at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.”

When we trust in Jesus Christ and follow Him through this life, God makes us right with Himself. Jesus is the right road to follow.

At the end of our lesson, Paul summarizes this truth. Galatians 3:13-14: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.’ [That’s Deuteronomy 21:23. Then:] He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.”

The true heirs of Abraham and Sarah aren’t people who do good works, because all our good works done to impress God or other people are worthless.

The true heirs of Abraham and Sarah, the true children of God, are those who know that it’s only through faith in Christ that our lives are set on the right path, today and always.

*This little "thought experiment" was inspired by a personal story recounted by N.T. Wright in his commentary on Galatians. He used the story to make an entirely different point about the section of this lesson from Galatians 2. I love Wright!

[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]

Giving From What We've Been Given

[This was shared during worship with the people (and guests) of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Luke 16:19-31
The parable that makes up today’s Gospel lesson was told by Jesus in the face of mockery directed at Him by Pharisees after He told the parable on which we focused last Sunday. At the end of that parable, Jesus said that it is impossible for us to serve two masters. Money cannot be our ultimate loyalty; that place must be reserved for God alone.

The Pharisees mocked Jesus because, Luke tells us, they were “lovers of money.” The Pharisees spiritualized their greed, employing a few proof texts from the Old Testament to support their idea that God gives good people (like themselves, the Pharisees would say) money.

You can hear the echoes of this notion even today. A friend told me about attending a small group Bible study one night at which six of the eight attendees insisted that they had their nice homes in suburbia because they obeyed God’s rules. Like the Pharisees, the people at this small group Bible study also insisted that poor people were poor because they were sinners.

Yet the Bible--in both the Old and New Testaments--is filled with examples of people rich and poor, who were right with God, not because of their goodness, but because they trusted in the God ultimately revealed to the world in Jesus Christ.

People who think that their wealth or success in this life prove their worthiness of God’s favor, ignore certain fundamental truths.

One of those truths is that none of us is worthy of God’s favor. We are all born in sin and deserve nothing but condemnation and death.

The other is that God loves us any way and sent Jesus to die for our sins and rise from the dead so that all who believe in Him may live eternally with God.

Pastor Dale Galloway once wrote memorably, “Jesus never met an unimportant person.” He might have added, “And He always punctured the egos of those who thought themselves more important than others.” You can see Jesus elevating those considered unimportant by the world while puncturing the egos of the proud in today's lesson.

Please go to it, Luke 16:19-31. Jesus begins: “There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day.”

In Biblical times, tyrian purple was the color of royalty. That’s because it was prohibitively expensive due to the rarity of the dye. It was made from the secretion of a particular specie of sea snail, hard to find. So, Jesus is conveying that this rich man was really rich, like a king.

Our impulse at this point is to check out, thinking this is a parable directed at money grubbing rich people, not at people of our financial station. Do you want to hear something daunting? The other night, I found a web site called Global Rich List. It allows you to type in a level of yearly income and see where it stacks up with the rest of the world. I typed in $23,000. I did this because the Department of Health and Human Services says that in the US, a family of four making less than $23,550, is living in poverty. I don’t doubt that’s true. But the Global Rich List says that an American making $23,000 a year is wealthier than  97.75% of the global population! The point is that by global standards, most of us in this sanctuary this morning are among the wealthiest people in the world. We can’t dodge Jesus‘ parable so easily. We--you and I--are among the world’s haves, like the rich man in Jesus’ parable. Please read on.

“But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.”

This Lazarus is not the friend of Jesus who Jesus raised from the dead. This is a fictional character, the only time Jesus ever gave a name to such a character in a parable.

By doing giving this character a name, Jesus is turning the world’s usual way of doing things on its head. The poor, after all, are often a mass of faceless, nameless people in the eyes of the world, people passed by at freeway off-ramps or in walks through usually rough neighborhoods after concerts or ballgames. But by naming the beggar in His parable, Jesus is telling us that the poor among us, are real human beings, with thoughts and feelings and needs no less important than ours.

That’s why donating food to the CHAP emergency food bank, helping with the upcoming community dinners Saint Matthew will be doing with Trinity Lutheran Church, or donating health kit items to Lutheran World Relief, as coordinated by the Women of Saint Matthew, are so important. The poor may be invisible to the eyes of the world. But God sees them and God calls His people to see them and to serve them, just as God has seen and served us in Jesus Christ!

The Lazarus of Jesus’ parable is in a pitiable state. He is full of sores, presumably due to being malnourished. Our text says that he was laid at the gate to the rich man’s estate. But this is a dainty translation. The verb translated as laid is more literally rendered as thrown. Who threw Lazarus away, we don’t know. But Jesus says that Lazarus, this thrown-away man, would have been satisfied with the scraps from the rich man’s table, that he was so weak that dogs, not domesticated house pets in first century Judea, but wild animals, licked his open sores and Lazarus was unable to fend them off. It’s not a pretty picture. Please read on.

“So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried.”

Lazarus was carried by angels to Abraham’s bosom. Abraham, the Old Testament figure whose descendants became the nation of Israel, “believed in God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Despite the torments and poverty of his earthly life, Lazarus also believed in God. Because of his faith, he, like Abraham, was counted righteous, worthy of being at the heavenly banquet with God.

Please look at what happens next. “And being in torments in Hades, [the rich man] lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.  Then he cried and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.'”

The rich man was, like Lazarus, a descendant of Abraham. But, unlike Abraham, he had not put his trust in God. Clearly, his trust had been in his money bag. Had he trusted God and not mammon, the beggar outside his gate, Lazarus, might not have starved to death. A good work done for Lazarus would not have saved the rich man, of course. Only the God we know in Jesus Christ can save us from sin and death as we trust our whole lives to Him. But the clear implication of Jesus’ parable is that if the rich man had truly believed in God--trusted God--rather than his wallet, he would have found it easier to part with some of his money to help people like Lazarus.

The Bible teaches that one of the reasons God gives us money is precisely to help the helpless people of the world like Lazarus. In Ephesians 4:28, those who once made their income by stealing but had come to faith in Christ are told: “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.” In torment in Hades, the place of the dead, the rich man calls out to Father Abraham in heaven for help.

Verses 25 and 26: “But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.'”

Abraham could offer no help to the rich man. Nor could Lazarus. The rich man’s time on earth was done. His wealth, stubbornly held onto, had not made him acceptable in the eyes of God. Nor did his wealth prove that he was better than anyone else, not even a poor man who had been thrown at his gate. Having refused to trust in God while on earth, he was now separated from God’s eternal feast. Habakkuk 2:4 reminds us that we are right with God not because we have fat paychecks or even because we do good works. “Behold the proud,” it says, “his soul is not upright in him. But the just shall live by faith.”

Now, the rich man becomes a beggar. Verse 27: “Then [the rich man] said, 'I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.' Abraham said to him, 'They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.' And he said, 'No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' But he said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.'"

One of the key themes that Luke hammers away at in his telling of his gospel’s story about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection and in Acts, his history of the early Church, is this: The God of the Old Testament is the same God we meet in Jesus Christ in the New Testament. In both Testaments, God hates sin and injustice, calls people to faith in Him alone, promising forgiveness and life to those who believe in Him, and warning of condemnation--self-condemnation, really--for those who turn their backs on the life only God can give.

In Jesus’ parable, Abraham tells the rich man that if the rich man’s brothers didn’t pay heed to the will of God to trust in God, to love God, and to love neighbor when they heard and read about it in “the law and the prophets,” that is, in what you and I know as the Old Testament, neither would they pay attention to God or repent for their sins and trust in God alone for life and hope, if someone who had been dead should rise from death and appear to them.

Some Christians, in a Pharisaic mood, may see Jesus’ words as applying to Jews who refuse to trust in the crucified and risen Christ. But if they do so, they miss Jesus’ point.

The God disclosed to all the world in Jesus Christ has given His witness to Jew and Gentile alike. As tempting as it is to put our trust in things we can see--things like money and possessions--our call is to trust in God alone and then, from hearts brimming over with gratitude for the freedom from sin and death we enjoy as the gift of God to all who live the trust in Jesus Christ, live the faith we confess here on Sunday mornings.

God’s earth produces more than enough to provide for every person’s need for daily bread. We live our faith when we dare to share what God has given to us with those in need.

And we needn’t be afraid that we’ll have less of what we need if we give to others. There is no limit to the bounties of God’s grace or goodness. The God Who loves to give will also empower us to give to others from hearts filled with God's infinite storehouse of love. Amen

[This sermon is really a companion to the one given last Sunday. You might want to check it out here.]

Christ's Return for Judgment (Part 13, The Augsburg Confession)

We Lutherans confess our belief in it almost every time we gather for worship.

What is the "it" we confess?

Well, in the Apostles’ Creed, we claim to believe that the risen and ascended Jesus will one day “come again to judge the living and the dead.”

In the Nicene Creed, we say that Jesus “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end.”

Lutheran Christians have always accepted the historic creeds as faithful expressions of, not just belief, but of essential truth revealed to the world by God. And that includes their assertion that one day Jesus Christ will return to judge every human being.

Today, as we continue to consider what it means to be a Lutheran Christian, we look at the topic of Article 16 of The Augsburg Confession, “Christ’s Return for Judgment.” The first paragraph of the article says:

Our [Lutheran] churches teach that at the end of the world Christ will appear for judgment and will raise all the dead....He will give the godly and elect eternal life and everlasting joys, but He will condemn ungodly people and the devils to be tormented without end... 

For those who seek to bring God under human authority or subject Christ to their own preferences, the very notion that Jesus Who made Himself our servant and bore our sin on the cross is going to one day send some people to hell is disagreeable. "All because they don’t believe in Jesus?" they wonder. “That’s awfully arbitrary,” a woman said to me once.

But I couldn’t help but wonder if she also thought it arbitrary of God to extend the possibility of forgiveness and new life to sinners who deserve condemnation and death.

If you and I are willing to accept the Jesus Who is so arbitrary that He offers eternity as a free and undeserved gift to all who turn from sin and believe in Him, we must also be willing to accept the Jesus Who acquiesces to the desires of some for lives without Him. There will come a point when Jesus will accept that as people's final answer to Him.

But should we fear judgment day? What will it be like?

Please turn to the passage that the Confession mentions first, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:2.

Paul wrote the letter from which these verses come to the Christians living in a place called Thessalonica, a Greek city set on the Aegean Sea. He wrote it in about 51 AD.

The Thessalonian Christians were disappointed, less then twenty years after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension, that the Lord hadn’t yet returned to bring His new creation to its final, eternal fulfillment.

In the meantime, believers had died. What, the surviving Christians wondered, would happen to those who had already passed away if they weren’t around when Jesus returned to this world?

Paul sought to calm their fears. He writes: “...I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope.”

Paul is saying that the deaths of believers will bring grief to those who loved them as surely as the deaths of non-believers bring grief to their loved ones. But, he’s saying, if the one you loved was a believer in Jesus, there will also be hope in your grief, the hope of living eternally with a Savior Who conquered sin, death, and the devil for those who believe in Him!

That’s why Paul writes what he does next: “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep.” (In other words, those who died believing in Christ will be raised at the moment of Jesus’ return and they too will witness Jesus’ return.)

Then, Paul describes what will happen on the day of Christ's return. “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with a trumpet of God. [There will be no mystery about it when Jesus returns. He won’t show up incognito. The whole human population, Christians and non-Christians will hear it and see it at the moment He makes His appearance.]

"Then [Paul goes on] we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.”

What Paul is trying to convey here is not what some people refer to as a rapture, but a reunion between Christ and His people.

After telling the Thessalonians to comfort one another with his words, he goes on: “But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you.” In this, Paul reflects Jesus’ words to His apostles when speaking of the day when He returns and judges the living and the dead: No one knows when it will happen. And anyone who claims they do is lying.

In fact, Christ's return will come perhaps when the world least expects it, when most of its inhabitants have no thought of Christ. Paul says, “that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.”

But what will Jesus be judging on judgment day?

Jesus will be judging one thing. One thing only. It’s this: Do we have faith? That means...

• Do we trust Jesus? 
• Have we trusted Him enough to confess our sins in His Name? 
• Have we trusted in Him enough to confess our doubts about Him? 
• Have we trusted in Him enough to let Him lead and direct us through His Word, found in the Bible, even when where He leads isn’t where we want to go and what He directs us to do is the last thing we want to do? 
• Have we wanted Jesus even when we wandered down the blind alley of sin? 

Faith is what Jesus will be judging.

Faith is that gift we receive as we openly take the Word of God about Jesus Christ and the Sacraments of the Church. The just--the people made right with God--live by faith, the Bible tells us (Habakkuk 2:4, Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11, Hebrews 10:38).

In Matthew 24:13, Jesus tells us how powerful this faith is within the context of talking about the day when He returns to the world: “...the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

What does it mean to endure in our faith in Christ?

There are superstars like Paul and Peter, Martin Luther and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Corrie ten-Boom and Mother Teresa to inspire us with their enduring faith, of course. Despite persecution, sometimes in spite of their own doubts, they endured in trusting in Christ.

They kept heeding the Word about new life for all who believe in Jesus Christ, even when sin, death, and the devil accosted them.

But I want to hold up a different saint as an example of faith to you right now. You don’t know her. In fact, I’m not even going to use her real name. She was a member of one of my former parishes.

Joan had been afflicted with a disease that had kept her from doing many of the ordinary things people do in life since she was a teenager. But she had married. She had become a mother. She had become a grandmother.

But now, at just age 54, she was about to lose her life. Her hospital room was dark the day I visited her because any light seemed to cause her pain and she never opened her eyes. She barely had the strength to speak.

“Oh, pastor,” she told me, “I’m afraid to die. It’s not the dying that frightens me. It’s just that I’m an awful sinner.”

Now, we all know that all sins are violations of God’s holiness. In the eyes of a holy God, every sin we commit--from failing to keep a day for Him to taking His Name in vain, from stealing to gossiping, from sexual intimacy outside of marriage to murder--is equally damning.

But as I sat with Joan, I felt certain of two things.

First, I was certain that she was a sinner, just like me. Just like you.

And second, I felt certain that only a person who recognizes their sin and realizes how wonderful the God we know in Jesus Christ receives the forgiveness for sin God offers to those who repent and believe Christ.

As gently as I could, I asked, “Joan, do you remember what Jesus told Nicodemus? He said, ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life.’”

“Do you believe in Jesus?” I asked Joan. A tear poured down one of her cheeks and she said, “Yes.”

I tried to assure Joan that soon, she would see Jesus face to face.

To many of us, the biggest mystery about God is this: He has saved unworthy sinners like us.

It does show how gracious God is. But, you know what? We need to get over  thoughts like that. They’re too much about us. We need to focus on Christ instead.

Even if you and I found a way to go through a single day without sinning, we still wouldn’t deserve forgiveness or eternity. In my natural inborn self, I’m a sinner who deserves death.

Thank God that on judgment day, I will not be judged for whom I am, but for Who Jesus Christ is and that, through faith in Him, He has come to live in me.

Please look Galatians 2:20. Paul writes there: “I have been crucified [that is my old sinful self] with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

Martin Luther had this passage in mind when he spoke of how he dealt with the devil's temptations to sin. When Luther sensed the devil tempting him, knocking on the door of his heart, Luther didn't dare go to to the door. Instead, he sent Jesus to answer for him. Luther sensed Jesus telling the devil, "Martin Luther doesn't live here any more. I do. Now go to where you belong!"

Listen, Lutherans: Your old sinful self died at Baptism. A new self, your Christ self, rose then.

People can commit spiritual suicide as surely as they commit physical suicide, of course. They can walk away from Christ and His promises as I did when I was an atheist. Had I died in those years, Christ would have respected my preferences and allowed me to enter eternity without Him.

But if you and I keep holding onto Jesus, I can assure you that when we are genuinely repentant for sin, on the day of Christ’s return, God the Father will look not on us as the sinners we are. Instead, He will only see Jesus Christ living in us.

God makes of every person who repents and believes in Christ another Christ--a "little Christ," as Luther put it, another child of God, each with our own personalities and gifts, but each surrendered to the God Who made us and loves them, who pray with Jesus, “nonetheless, Father, not my will, but Your will be done.”

God covers the sins of those who believe in Christ with the grace and forgiveness of Christ and imbues our lives with Christ-like purposes and pursuits.

And as we keep repenting and keep believing, the old sinner is drowned all over again in our baptismal waters and the new self is enlivened again by the Word of God and sustained again by Christ’s body and blood in Holy Communion.

First John 3:2 says, “Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed [in other words, when Jesus returns to judge the living the dead], we shall be like Him...”

We will be just like Jesus, fit for eternity, not because we did good or holy deeds, but because, like Joan, we held onto the promise of forgiveness and new life God makes to those who turn their backs on sin, death, and the devil and keep on following Jesus, when their faith is weak and when their faith is strong.

At the day of judgment, all who have endured in following Jesus will hear Jesus tell them--you who believe in Jesus will hear Him tell you: “Enter the joy of your Master.”

Could there possibly be better words than those to hear? If there are, I can’t imagine what they might be!

This week, ask God to give you the chance to share the good news of Jesus Christ with every person you can, to invite them to worship and study and pray with you, to ask them how, as a believer in Jesus, you can help them. Do those things, I beg you, so that everyone you know or love will come to believe in Jesus and hear those same words on judgment day that you want to hear: "Enter the joy of your Master!” Amen!

***********************************************************************************
 [This was shared during both of this morning's worship services at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.] 

After this morning's early service at Saint Matthew, I was asked what happened to Christians when they die: do they sleep until the resurrection or do they go immediately into the presence of God? The answer, I think is, "Yes." I talk about this question in this blog post from 2008, Where Do We Go When We Die?

Martin Luther and the Need for Reformation Today!

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning. We celebrated Reformation Sunday.]

Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 46
Romans 3:19-28
John 8:31-36

He was born in November 1483, in the German principality of Saxony. His name was Martin Luther. From an early age, he exhibited intelligence and many talents. As time passed, he would become a great preacher, a theologian, and a musician.

These pursuits were far from his father’s intentions for young Martin. Hans Luther wanted the boy to become a lawyer.

That was the trajectory on which Martin’s life was moving until a shattering experience intervened. He was going back to the university he attended when a thunderstorm arose. A lightning bolt knocked Luther to the ground. Understandably terrified, Martin cried out to the patron saint of miners. “Saint Ann,” he said, “save me; I will become a monk.”

Luther was mistaken, of course, to trust in a saint instead of God. As one of our Read the Bible in a Year passages from last week, Jeremiah 17:7 puts it, “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.”

But who knows? If Luther hadn’t gone to a monastery, you and I, the beneficiaries of his rediscovery of Biblical truths that had been buried beneath traditions and power plays, might not be here this morning.

Nonetheless the new monk Luther was a disturbed young man. He saw himself as completely guilty and hopelessly condemned to an eternity in hell. He couldn’t imagine that God would ever forgive him. He was a mess!

Believing that a fully occupied life would crowd out Luther’s worries though, his superiors decided that Luther should study to become a doctor of theology. He would then teach at a new university being started in the Saxon town of Wittenberg.

At first, the new regimen of work, which included administering fourteen monasteries, pastoring a local church, and teaching at the new university, did nothing to change Luther’s loathing of God and  himself.

But then, something happened to change Luther’s life--and history itself.

Like most seminarians and priests of his day, Luther had never studied Scripture. He did so now, as he prepared for the classes he was teaching. In the Bible, Luther found a God quite different from the one often preached in the Church of his day. He saw a God of grace and love...

• Who reaches out to His children, 
• Who charitably understands their fallen humanity, 
• Who forgives and empowers right living, and promises eternity to all with faith in Him. 

Luther saw a God:

• Who hates sin while loving sinners,
• Who lovingly calls all to repent for their sin and believe in His Son, Jesus.

Luther’s new understanding of God crystallized as he studied two verses in the New Testament book of Romans. Please pull out the pew Bibles and turn to page 648 to read them, Romans 1:16-17. They say:

For I am not ashamed of the Gospel [that means, the Good News about how God sent His Son Jesus to die and rise so that all who believe in Him will not be eternally separated from God in hell, but live with God eternally], for it [the Gospel] is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it [that is, in the Gospel’s message about Jesus] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written [and this comes from the Old Testament book of Habakkuk]: "The just shall live by faith."

Luther saw that righteousness is not some goodness owned by super-saints. Righteousness is having a right relationship with God.

Through Jesus’ cross and empty tomb, Christ gives righteousness to all who turn from sin and believe in Him. Christ does all this as a free gift.

The Bible calls this gift, along with all of God’s other undeserved blessings, grace.

Ephesians sums up the truth that changes the lives of followers in Jesus for eternity when it says, “by grace you have been saved through faith…”

As Luther grew in the confidence he had in the new life given to him by Christ, he grew bolder in sharing what he had learned from the Bible. On October 31, 1517, he posted 95 theses--or propositions for debate—on the church door in Wittenberg.

Luther’s theses challenged a common practice in the Roman Catholic Church of his day. The Church then taught that there was a place called “purgatory,” a sort of holding room that the dead supposedly went to between death and eternity. Purgatory was supposed to be a place where people were purified for entry into heaven. Purgatory was purely a human invention. To raise money, the Church often authorized the mass sale of pieces of paper called indulgences. Indulgences allowed people to buy hundreds or thousands of years out of purgatory for loved ones or even themselves. (Depending on how much a person wanted to or could spend.) Luther was offended by this practice. It turned God's gift of grace for all who trust in Christ into a commodity to be bought and sold by human beings.

When Luther’s preaching and teaching against indulgences impacted the bottom line on their sale, the Church went after him. At a gathering in the German city of Wurms, before the emperor, Luther was ordered to recant, or repudiate, all of his writings. He refused. Ultimately, he came under what was known as an “imperial ban,” meaning that anyone who saw Luther was authorized to kill him on sight.  Luther was labeled a heretic, a perverter of the Christian faith.

But Luther and those who came to agree with him remained steadfast in proclaiming the God we see in Jesus Christ, the God of grace and God of glory. Among Luther’s last words were, “We are all beggars,” an acknowledgement that none of us is better or more important than others in God's eyes and that all with faith in Christ are the recipients of God’s charitable gifts: forgiveness and new life. We cannot earn them, but thank God, He loves to give them to those humble enough to surrender to Christ! These are the central truths of God’s Word, the Bible.

Luther died in 1546.

We celebrate October 31 each year as Reformation Day because on All Saints Eve, Hallowed Evening or, as we call it, Hallowe'en, in 1517, Luther’s 95 Theses began a major reformation of the Church.

That reform movement goes on to this day.

We celebrate the Sunday closest to October 31 each year as Reformation Sunday.

I’m convinced that if Martin Luther were a pastor of our own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) today, there would be some things he would celebrate. But I'm equally sure that he would also be agitating for reform within the ELCA and would be unpopular among many.

On one hand, Luther, who believed that the Bible contains God’s authoritative Word and was willing always to be shown what the truth is by Scripture and plain reason, would be delighted that, in accordance with the Scriptures, we ELCA Lutherans see women and men as equals and that women called by God are ordained as pastors among us.

But I’m sure that Luther would also look at Called to Common Mission, the agreement struck between the ELCA and the Episcopal Church-USA in 1999, and be appalled that people who call themselves Lutherans have accepted the belief that the words and actions of bishops—mere human beings—have as much authority as the Word of God.

He would look at the legalistic system we have in selecting voting members to our synod and churchwide assemblies and ask why we have replaced attentiveness to God’s Word with a Pharisee-like insistence on quotas.

I’m also certain that Luther would look at the many ELCA bishops, pastors, and seminary professors who reject the Bible’s teachings on things like Jesus’ virgin birth, on Jesus’ miracles, on Jesus being truly God and truly human, and on Jesus’ physical resurrection from the dead and ask, “Why do people of the Reformation tradition no longer accept the faith of the Bible and of the Lutheran Confessions?”

Clearly, the need for the movement to reform Christ’s Church that began when Martin Luther posted those 95 Theses on October 31, 1517, has not ended.

As long as there are people within and outside the Church who believe that they can construct lives from fortresses of their own designs and efforts, in which they make people and things other than Jesus Christ the foundations on which they build their lives and hope for eternity, the Reformation must continue.

We must keep singing and continue to strive to live for the truth Luther summarized in his greatest hymn, “A mighty fortress is our God!”

Martin Luther learned and then taught from God’s Word that our relationship with God and our freedom from sin and death come only from the God of the Bible, the God ultimately revealed to all the world in Jesus Christ.

These gifts—relationship with God, freedom from sin and death—come to us freely from a God Who is not subject to our human authority or our puny religiosity.

They come to us from Christ alone, Who shows us that God isn’t our enemy, but our very best friend, and worthy of all our glory, honor, praise, living, trust, hope, obedience, and surrender.

Keep the Reformation Luther began going!

Keep turning to God’s Word alone, to God’s Son Jesus alone, to salvation by grace through our faith in Christ alone! 

Then, pass the truth of grace alone, faith alone in Christ alone, and God’s Word alone as our guide in life, onto everyone you know. Amen!